


Disaster

by nanuk_dain



Series: Impossible Relationships [24]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, M/M, disturbing imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-27
Updated: 2012-07-27
Packaged: 2017-11-10 20:45:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/470508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanuk_dain/pseuds/nanuk_dain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the immediate aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, Ray and Tim arrive in Sri Lanka as part of a rescue and relief group. It's worse than anything they'd expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disaster

  


[  
](http://pics.livejournal.com/nanuk_dain/pic/000be3gq)

  


It was a different kind of heat than Afghanistan or Iraq. It was just as hot, but it wasn't the dry heat that came with those tiny grains of sand that managed to get absolutely _everywhere_. No, this was the humid heat of the subtropics that made you sweat the moment you set foot outside the air conditioned areas. The best way to deal with it was to just stay inside.

Only there was no air condition because there were no houses anymore. 

The thing that hit Ray again and again, right after the temperature and the sweat that was constantly running – _pouring_ , really – down his back, was the smell. Warm and strong, foul and sharp, a stench he knew he'd never forget. The stink of rotting flesh, humans and animals alike, of brackish water moulding in the humid heat mixed with all kinds of fluids Ray didn't even want to think about. 

Their target, Mutur, a small fishing town on the southern side of the Koddiyar Bay, wasn't any better or worse than Trincomalee. It was ghostly quiet, a haunted silence that wasn't even filled with the noise of the jungle surrounding it. There were almost no people on the streets – no _living_ people, at least. Ray had stopped counting the dead about ten klicks back. He wondered how their little team was supposed to gain control of the situation, how they should manage to keep infections from spreading, how they could actually _help_ the survivors. It seemed all too much; too much chaos, too much damage, too many injured, too many dead. Too little water, too few people still upright, too few rescuers. They were only _nine_ members in this team, for fuck's sake, what could they even hope to achieve?

"Stop it, Josh." He heard Tim's quiet voice next to him, accompanied by a gentle nudge of an elbow in his side, more encouraging than chiding. "Every help we can provide makes a difference."

Ray gritted his teeth and nodded, forcing himself to push the overwhelming feeling of helplessness aside. He'd managed to get through the clusterfuck of OIF, and he knew he would manage to get through this, but sometimes he couldn't help wondering where Tim got his strength from, what made him still _believe_ when he was constantly surrounded by despair and death. What they'd seen in Trincomalee was enough to stifle anybody's belief, yet Tim still sat upright, ready to jump into action and help wherever he could. 

Ray nudged Tim back, careful not to take his eyes off the road that wasn't really a road anymore, and nodded. "Understood."

The four Jeeps of Team Two they'd flown over from the States had crawled in a steady caravan all the way to Mutur. They'd thought about taking boats across the bay when the decision had been made that Mutur needed help as soon as possible, and that Team Two was to go there while Team One stayed in Trincomalee and Team Three went north. Passing over the bay was a much faster way to get to Mutur from Trincomalee, but the sad reality was that there were hardly any boats left, and none of those could be trusted with the weight of the supplies and the equipment. On top of that, the local military had warned them that the waters weren't safe, especially close to the shore. Nobody knew what lay underneath the surface, how much debris had been sucked out into the bay. Whole houses were missing, and it was a good guess that they were somewhere out in the water. 

So they'd stuck to the original plan to cross overland, roughly following the former road along the coast. It was anything but a fun ride. Sometimes they had to drive through water high enough to swallow the hoods of the Jeeps, sometimes they crossed stretches of muddy farmland along the side of the former road that was now destroyed. Twice they'd even had to lay out the long wooden planks they'd brought in order to get the Jeeps across the mud without getting stuck, and Ray could still feel the warm filth cling to his legs up to his thighs from where he'd sunk in deep into the mud when he'd moved the planks. Sometimes they passed through the ruins of houses, whole villages. It felt unreal, like the movie set of one of those epic catastrophe flicks where the world was always ending. Even the corpses fit the picture. 

Yeah, it could have been a movie, if it wasn't for the smell.

Ray concentrated on driving and was vaguely reminded of OIF where he'd also led the way on roads that didn't really exist, only that now they were in Jeeps instead of Humvees and nobody was shooting at them. And their victors were loaded with medical supplies and technical equipment, everything from bandages and stretchers to tents and generators and even a water purifier. This time they'd come to help, not to kill. Not one weapon in the whole convoy – well, apart from the knife Ray was carrying. He knew everybody on the team had one, but they weren't meant for fighting. The blades were too short to make good weapons, anyway.

When the amount of destroyed building grew, Ray slowed down to have a closer look. They had reached what must have been the town square, but it wasn't really recognisable as such anymore. But at least there were people – _living_ , walking people – who eyed their approach with tired and resigned faces that slowly sparked with hope. In Trincomalee, the MSF teams had learned that the military had been hit equally hard as the general population and that the efforts to reach the areas that were damaged the worst were made harder by the impassable roads and the sheer dimension of the catastrophe. There weren't enough personnel to help everywhere and when the Médécins Sans Frontières teams from San Diego had arrived, the local military had actually been very welcoming, glad about the additional manpower, the supplies and the reinforcement. 

No help had come to Mutur yet. The men and women of San Diego's Team Two were the first, and it showed.

"Let's stop here." Tim said calmly into the radio to notify the other victors of their convoy, his eyes searching the area. "There's enough space to set up the tents. It's the best we're going to find."

Ray stopped, the Jeeps behind him followed his example. All team members got out and gathered in a circle next to the first Jeep that carried Tim, Ray and most of the sensible technical equipment. Ray watched Tim. He looked serious but determined and there was the same calm efficiency to his movements that Ray knew from Iraq. Somehow it made him hope that they were really able to make a difference here. 

"Josh, Pete, Mel, get the medical tents up. We need them as soon as humanly possible." Tim looked at each of the men who were the team's technical support, and they nodded in acknowledgement. "Set up the water purifier. We need clean water more than anything else. And get our communications running."

Next he turned to the man and the woman who'd driven the second Jeep. "Lynn, Jerry, prepare supplies for treatment and see that you're ready as soon as the tents are up. I fear there are a lot of people who are in need of treatment."

Lynn Middleton, a sturdy brunette in her forties, and Jerry Kingsley, a tall, lean man of about thirty-something, nodded with determination in their eyes. They were on their first relief and rescue mission, but they'd been practising doctors for years and Ray deemed them efficient and motivated. He especially liked Lynn who had a sharp and dirty sense of humour and who gave to him as good as she got. Being new to this kind of situation, both doctors had wordlessly accepted that Tim had been put in charge of the team, never mind that he wasn't a fully trained doctor, and that made them rise even higher in Ray's esteem.

"The rest of you, scout the area and get in contact with the locals. They might know where people need help." Tim concluded and as soon as the orders were given, everybody moved, knowing that time was of the essence. With every hour it took them to get things going, they lost more people to the effects of the tsunami. The stench was the best reminder of that.

By the time two of the four tents were set up, Ray had forgotten what it felt like to be dry. He was soaked in sweat and his clothes stuck to his skin, but he didn't really care. He hadn't even bothered to remove his shirt for relief. The sight of the people moving in on them, carrying the wounded, reminded him that it was absolutely essential to get things going, to make it possible for the docs to start treating the people, to create a place where they could safely set up the water purifier and their sensible equipment along with a generator to create at least enough electricity to keep the most basic systems in the medical tents running. Pete, a middle-aged engineer, and Mel, a technician of about Ray's age, worked with the same quiet determination that had taken possession of Ray's mind, and despite the less than ideal conditions they managed to set up the tents in record time. Once they were done, they split up, with Pete working on the water purifier and Ray and Mel heading over to the tents to set up the equipment. Time seemed to run and there were more and more people gathering around the tents in an awfully quiet assembly. 

And always, there was that horrible smell. Ray wondered if he would ever be able to get it out of his nose and his mind. He doubted it.

It was a few hours after the tents had been set up that Lyle Peters, a young man who'd worked as a medic in San Diego, came back from scouting the area with a middle-aged woman in tow. By now the docs were working non-stop on the people who'd been injured the worst, the elderly, the women and the children. There seemed to be always more people than the minute before. Ray had given up trying to keep track. It was worse than Baghdad.

Lyle and the woman arrived at the first medical tent where Tim was treating a young boy who looked pretty beaten. The woman's clothes were as dirty and rugged as everybody else's, her long hair was matted to her head and little cuts and bruises were visible all over her arms and face. She showed the same signs of exhaustion as everybody else, yet she stood straight and moved with purpose and a sense of authority that Ray hadn't seen in anybody since their arrival in Sri Lanka. It sparked his curiosity enough to look up from where he was trying to make their communications work. Jerry, who'd just finished bandaging up an old man on the adjacent makeshift examination table, came over and immediately reached for her arm to have a look at a rather nasty cut, but she pulled back and shook her head.

"No, it's not me who needs your help." She said resolutely in accented but fluent English and pointed at the remains of a stone building across the former town square. "The orphanage... We've been searching, but we haven't found all the children yet."

"You speak English." Jerry remarked with surprise and Ray suppressed a snort at the useless observation.

"Yes, I'm... I _was_ an English teacher at the local school." She sounded rather annoyed, as if she thought that the time could be used way better than spending it talking about herself.

"Very good." Tim said with a tiny nod, never stopping in his treatment of the boy, and gave her a serious look. "Ma'am, would you help us communicating with the people? There was no time to organise a translator and we need to know where we're needed most."

She looked at Tim with a hard gaze as if assessing him, then, after a good ten seconds of watching him with the child, she nodded. "My name is Padma Perera. I'll help where I can." 

"Thank you, Ma'am." Tim gave a little but earnest bow of his head before he let go of the boy to turn to Ray. "Josh, take four men with you and check out the orphanage. Mel can continue working on the communications. I need somebody with field experience in the lead for the search." 

"Yessir." Ray replied with a salute and picked three men and a woman that he knew could deal with the gruesome sights he expected to come across in the orphanage – infant victims were always way more difficult. They followed the woman – Padma – to the building that was still partly standing, one of the few stone structures in the area. She guided them through a gate that had no doors anymore into a courtyard that was covered in mud and debris. All the while she explained which areas had already been searched and where the structure had collapsed and probably buried some of the missing children and teachers. In the courtyard were several other people, obviously assisting in the search. In one corner of the courtyard lay the body of a man, disfigured and bend in an unnatural way, halfway stuck under a tree trunk and a piece of wall that had come down. There were flies all over the body and Ray knew there was nothing they could do for him. The other people milling around the courtyard didn't seem to notice the corpse anymore.

"Spread out, search the buildings.” Ray looked around his team and saw only determination. “Be careful, especially ceilings and floors might not be stable. Some parts have already collapsed, I expect the rest to come down at some point, so don't take any unnecessary risks. Bring every survivor you find to the Docs." 

There were nods. Ray didn't say what he knew they were all thinking. _'If there are any survivors.'_ It had been five days since the tsunami, the chances of finding any survivors in the ruins were close to zero. There would most likely only be bodies.

Maintaining their determined faces, Ray's little team dispersed in different directions to begin their search. Ray walked over to the area where Padma had indicated that they suspected bodies – no, not bodies, _people_ – to be buried under the collapsed structure. Ray took the door closest to the caved in part and carefully checked out the stability of the ceiling before he slowly went through the room, moving overturned furniture out of the way as he went. His boots left messy footprints in the mud where the roof kept the sun from drying out the water that had swept through the building. He didn't find anything, so he progressed to the adjacent room and repeated the process. 

When he swept the second room with his gaze, Ray suddenly spotted an arm, a tiny arm with a hand clenched into a fist. It came out from under a part of caved-in ceiling, almost hidden under the debris, and Ray hurried over, gripping the soaked wood and pushing it up. "Hey there, I got you! Don't worry, I'll get you out." 

The ceiling was stuck and he gritted his teeth in the effort to make it move. For a moment he considered calling for the others, but he didn't want to wait until they arrived. "Come on, move. Move, move, move!"

Then the wood suddenly gave and he managed to turn it over with a triumphant shout. "Ha, gotcha!"

The grin froze on his face when he looked down. The hand had fallen to the side, the angle of the arm completely wrong. It was only partly attached to the small body of a little boy, his breast caved in where the ceiling had crushed him. Flies moved off the body and Ray understood that the child must have been dead for days. Suddenly, the stench seemed overwhelming.

Ray felt the bile rise in his throat and tried to swallow against it. This wasn't even the first time he saw a dead child, he'd seen his share both in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet somehow this was too much, the lifeless eyes staring at him out of a tiny face that was swollen and purple on one side where something must have hit the kid before it had been crushed. Ray felt sick and had to turn away, then he bend over and retched, his meagre lunch coming back up. He leaned heavily with one arm against the wall and tried to regain his breath while keeping back the stupid, useless tears that threatened to spill. He was incredibly glad he was alone. 

It took him a moment until he could breath again, then he slowly reached for his water bottle and rinsed his mouth against the foul taste. He left the room without looking back.

He knew they'd have to come back later to bury the dead to reduce the risk of an epidemic spreading among the survivors, but right now, he couldn't deal with the sight.

Ray made sure to be careful and extra attentive wherever he checked the rubble. If there was any chance of finding any of the kids alive, he would never forgive himself if he missed it. With every part of the building that came out empty he couldn't decide if he was relieved or frustrated. He climbed the caved in part that Padma had shown them and began to aimlessly move some of the debris, throwing it behind him. He couldn't say how long he diminished the pile, but the mindless work helped him banning the pictures of the crushed boy a few rooms away. When a few bricks next to him moved without his doing and rolled down the pile, he almost failed to notice it.

Then there was suddenly a hand visible under the desktop of what was most likely a broken table, so small that it had to belong to a child. For a terrible moment Ray feared what he would find if he dug it out. He didn't want to find another dead kid. 

Then the hand moved, left, right, and retreated back to where it had come from.

“Oh my...” For a second, Ray was stunned into immobility, then he felt a surge of adrenaline course through his system. “Hey! Hey, are you all right? Hold on, I'll get you!”

He grabbed stones, wood, dirt, everything that was between him and the buried child. He moved with the frantic urgency born of despair and hope, yet it took longer than he liked to get enough rubble off the table for him to able to lift it. As soon as he deemed it possible, he crouched down, gripped the edge of the table and raised it up, debris and all, to look underneath it. He was met by huge brown eyes that stared at him with the kind of resigned, dull fear that no child should know. Ray felt his heart stop, then it started beating at double speed and he smiled in sudden, bone-deep relief.

"Hey little bug." he said quietly and smiled reassuringly at the little girl. She watched him cautiously but didn't move. She was maybe three years old, her clothes were torn and dirty and she looked like she'd been soaking wet at some point, her face and hair tousled and covered in mud. She was just small enough that the table had managed to cover her and save her from the falling ceiling. It must have been luck, nothing but dumb luck, that she'd been under the table when the structure had come down, and that the legs of the table hadn't all broken under the impact. Two had remained strong, and that had saved her life. Ray didn't even want to think about how she'd managed to survive in that hole for five days without food or water. He couldn't help noticing the pools of dirty water on the ground and it made him shiver to think of what she must have done in order to survive. He wanted nothing more than to get her out of there, hug her close and make her forget everything she'd experienced in the past five days.

"I'm here to help you, little bug." Ray said calmly, although he knew she didn't understand him. With his free hand, he dug out his canteen, opened it and held it out to her with a slow movement, using the word he'd made the Padma teach him in Sinhala. “ _Water._ “ 

The girl hesitated for a moment as if she didn't believe he was real, then she slowly reached out and took the bottle to cradle it in her arms for a moment as if it was a stuffed toy before she raised it up and drank. After the first drops, she began to greedily suck on the bottle and had downed half of it before she let go and looked at him again.

“ _Name._ “ Ray said slowly and pointed at himself. “Ray.” 

He knew he had to get her to move out of there, he couldn't hold up the table forever, and he was in no position to climb into the tiny space to get her. She had to come to him.

He was incredibly glad he'd asked Padma for a few words on the way to the orphanage. He'd just been curious, but now it might come in handy. He repeated the gesture twice before he said _'name'_ again and pointed at the little girl. She looked at him with those huge brown eyes until Ray was about to repeat his words again when he heard her almost silent voice. “ _Lakmini._ “

Ray smiled at her. "' _Lakmini_ , hmm? Nice name, makes me think of Mini Mouse. Do you know Mini Mouse? I'm sure you'd like her."

The girl watched him and tilted her head slightly as if she was trying to figure out what he was saying. Ray laughed, most of it relief at finding her alive, and she gave a spontaneous smile in return. Ray reached out with the hand that wasn't holding up the table that and after a moment, she grabbed it and let him pull her out of under the broken table.

"Come here, my little bug, I will bring you to the Docs." Ray gathered her in his arms, surprised at the strength with which she held on to him, her thin arms closing around his neck as if she was afraid he would let go and leave her. She didn't let out a sound, didn't cry, just buried her face against his neck. Ray reassuringly patted her back and made sure to keep up a constant, easy stream of words. It seemed to calm her, although the grip of her little arms around his neck never loosened. "I know a very special Doc, the best Doc in the world. All kids love him, I'm sure you will, too. He pretends to be all grumpy and badass, you know, but he's all gooey inside. One look of your huge brown eyes and he'll melt right in front of you. Works for me every time, so you better listen to old Ray-Ray's advice, little bug."

Only a few minutes later, Ray entered the provisional hospital tent and walked over to Tim who was just releasing an old man from his care. Tim looked up, took in the situation with one glance, and smiled. Actually _smiled_. He knew Ray had found a survivor and it seemed to give him a boost of energy like nothing else could have. For a second, he just watched Ray with the little girl on his arm before he walked over to them.

When he reached them, Tim nodded at the little girl. "See, that's why we're here, Josh. To make a difference."

“Yeah.” Ray hugged the little girl closer and smiled down at her before he looked at Tim. “Now I get it.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've never been to Sri Lanka and I don't know Mutur for real, so everything I write about it and how I describe it is my imagination. It's hard to get some decent information about it, so don't kill me if the reality is entirely different from what I portray. Call it artistic licence XD.


End file.
